Instead of the structurally unsound Declaration and Constitution, then, she proposes a “pleasure-centered policy landscape,” and though she attempts to pass this off as more than a campaign for unlimited irresponsible sex, the rest of the book betrays her efforts. The goal of public policy should be about “enabling and promoting the pleasurable experiences of women,” she writes in the introduction. And in her conclusion she reiterates the notion: “Supporting healthy, pleasurable sex lives should be a public policy goal.”

Rather than examining the underlying causes of unhappiness, Filipovic repeatedly turns to the government, chronicling the stories of women whose pleasure hasn’t been sufficiently enabled by Uncle Sam. Take, for example, single motherhood, which she rightly laments as placing untold pressure on rising numbers of women. But she scoffs at the value of stable families and permanent marriages, instead suggesting that the government fill in the financial gaps created by the disintegration of the American family, as if federal money could ever compensate for the loneliness and pain that sexual autonomy often brings about.

In nearly every chapter, abortion appears as a simple escape for women with pregnancies “that just couldn’t be.” Though Filipovic is passionate about the entire feminist movement, its crowning jewel in her eyes is the government-sanctioned right to abortion on demand, without which women would be hopelessly lost, trapped, incapable of reaching true happiness.

Again and again, she depicts abortion as an absolutely necessary choice that gives women the right “to decide for themselves whether to bring life into the world or not.” Completely disregarded is the basic biological fact that in every abortion, life has already been brought into the world, and that life is mercilessly ended.